posted July 03, 2018 07:18
The irony of that painting is the olive branch. NASA was always a part of the military, despite the civilian feel they gave it in the early days, so that we'd feel better about giving our money for it. It felt like something we all did together. but things started changing quickly. More and more, shuttle flights began to be classified, and many experiments in the space station are still military oriented. Now it's official. Trump has given us the Space Force.

Lot's of people were excited about that. They envisioned Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, blasting off to fight aliens or nefarious traffickers of Unobtanium. But what it really means is placing high powered lasers in the sky, orbiting in every direction, so that any place on earth can be microwaved in about 3 seconds. Those satellites will be targets of every space-capable country on earth. Nobody wants to be held hostage to "The Death Ray." [cue theremin choir and bass trombones]

Here's how that's going to play out. Everyone's going to start launching kinetic rockets (big iron ball on a rocket) to smash into those satellites. Why kinetic? Because there's nothing to it but a big fist and a small rocket. It can slip past detection if done carefully, and it's hard to hit. These satellite smashers will bust those laser platforms to bits, sending tons of space debris in every direction. Low earth orbit will become a canopy of fine junk. If we're lucky, in a thousand years it will accrete into a disk — rings, like Saturn's or Uranus's, or for that matter the asteroid belt — and will leave the poles open for launches again. But it's going to be a long time before man will leave Earth's atmosphere again. Unless of course, it becomes a sport to do what Sandra Bullock did in Gravity.

Man always justifies his initial explorations with "peace."

"Oh, don't mind us. We're here in peace. We're just looking around. We've got these ships, and we just like using them. So wonderful to meet you. Got any food? We could sure use some and would be forever indebted to you. And someday You can come to OUR house for dinner." [and serve it to us]

Starts in peace, then turns into a territory grab, then it becomes about protection. Then it becomes about invasion, then genocide and control. I guess we've grabbed enough territory in space that it's time to protect it. It will be interesting to see who we'll be invading, killing, and controlling. This new thing will open doors we've never imagined before. We'll be able to target someone walking from his house to his car. ZAAP! WHOOSH! Pffzzt. splooch.

Enjoy the future!

Shooshie

The Famous DruidMember # 1769

posted July 04, 2018 02:58
There's nothing new about Space Force - every 'tough guy' wannabe goes through that phase - until wiser heads explain to them why it won't work.

Back in the 80s when Ronnie Ray-gun was having his 'Star Wars' fantasies some engineers here in oz did a feasibility study on countermeasures.

The easiest and cheapest: a small rocket to launch a nail or ball-bearing bomb - creating a cloud of shrapnel the orbiting platform will pass through at high speed. You don't even need to achieve orbital velocity - as long as the peak of your sub-orbital flight reaches the path of the Star Wars platform - the velocity difference between your slow projectile and the fast orbiter does all the damage.

The rocket they had in mind was pretty simple - the kind of thing any university engineering department worthy of the name could build for less than $1 million.

Et voila - you now have the mirror image of the description of the war in Afghanistan (a billion dollar plane launching a million dollar missile to blow up a hundred dollar tent) - a million dollar missile that took a few months to build shooting down a multi-billion-dollar space fortress that took a decade or more to design and build.